Study Material Recommendations

I will only speak to study materials that I or friends have used and only on exams that I have sat for. I am always willing to offer advice about exams, so please feel free to contact me via my About Me page.

Resources

  • SOA & CAS Websites: This is an excellent starting point to find the syllabus, free reading materials, practice problems, and past exams. It's the first place you should check before launching into any other materials, especially to ensure that any materials you may have "inherited" are up to date.
  • ADAPT by Coaching Actuaries: This is an interactive, skill-based quiz and test system for the preliminary exams. It gives you great detailed reports by topic on where your weaknesses lay and lets you customize the experience in a variety of ways. I used it on Exam 4/C and found it to be greatly beneficial. One of its greatest strengths is value - it's extremely affordable and provides an immense amount of feedback.
  • The Infinite Actuary: A great alternative to a live seminar, TIA is an online seminar system. Each exam has an instructor who keeps updated video lectures topic by topic. I find the practice problems and exams to be of the highest quality for all the seminars I've been subscribed to, but the actual lecture content can vary. Therefore I recommend this as a supplement to a separate written study manual or a thorough source material readthrough. (Quick tips: The video lectures work great on tablets! And you can pre-load the lectures while connected to the internet and then play them in full while offline for convenient studying on a bus or in a library without WiFi.)
  • The Rational Argumentator: This very generous actuary has written some 100% free study guides. While the content is most definitely outdated (the CAS Exam 5 and 6 guides are under the Pre-2011 structure), it offers a second or third explanation of key concepts, which is what can finally make some material "click". I've linked the specific guides as the main website itself is a bit complicated to navigate:
  • Actuarial Brew: I could not praise this little operation's study materials for Exam MFE highly enough. The writing and organization of their study manual is straightforward and easy to follow. They way they deconstruct concepts and provide helpful reminders of past material is innovative and extremely effective. While I haven't worked through their practice problems, their solutions to SOA past exams and practice problems gives me confidence they are also high-quality materials.
  • Actuarial Outpost Discussion Forum: This corner of a recruiting website is probably the #1 place for an actuarial student to find online peers. Several popular seminar instructors even commonly post weekly practice problems and provide feedback on study materials and old exam questions. While sometimes the students posting can get a bit competitive about whatever the topic at hand is, it's a great spot to find answers and real human interaction on what can be a very isolated pursuit.